"Veganism represents a holistic approach to living that transcends dietary preferences, advocating for a world where all beings can coexist without harm."
There is something new on the horizon that you should be aware of, understand, and, I hope, enthusiastically embrace. There is a nonprofit thinktank called RethinkX (https://www.rethinkx.com/) that has forecast and analyzed four "Disruptions" in various stages of development that we are undergoing: Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor. Obviously, the Food Disruption is the one most relevant to this discussion.
The X in RethinkX stands for crossed logistic, S, curves. The rising curve represents the adoption of a new disrupting technology, and the falling curve represents the bankruptcy of the incumbent technology. In today's world these take about fifteen to twenty years to be completed. Think of the internal combustion engine (soon to be disrupted itself by the EV in the new Transportation Disruption) disrupting the horse (after some three thousand years) at the beginning of the twentieth century, digital photography disrupting celluloid film photography, or Gutenberg's printing press disrupting two and a half millennia of handwritten manuscripts. Food, in the form of two technologies, precision fermentation (PF) and cellular agriculture (CA) is at the beginning of a disruption of the ten-thousand-year-old-plus Neolithic Revolution.
PF, the more basic of the two, is brewing, with the added feature of genetic modification of the fermenting microbe to produce any of the thousands of different nutrient molecules—protein, fat, or carbohydrate. Note that this is not GMO food: the modification is to the fermenting microbe, not to the brewed product, which contains no genetic material. Like other disruptions, this began as an incredibly expensive process, but the price has plummeted and will continue to do so until it is much less expensive than conventional food production, which will drive the disruption. The first product was pharmaceutical: Humulin or human insulin, a precision brew, disrupted animal insulin, a distinctly inferior pharmaceutical extracted and processed from pancreases in slaughterhouses. The acronym for the Standard American Diet, which has unfortunately been spreading worldwide, is appropriately, SAD. It is responsible for the worldwide explosion of the chronic diseases of aging. Its disappearance will be part of the disruption.
CA will be started from cellular biopsies from food animals, which will not harm those animals. The principal expense of producing these cultures is the cost of their distinctive growth cultures. As the cost of PF plummets, the cost of CA will follow, and will bankrupt the slaughterhouse and send it into oblivion. This process should be essentially complete in the early 2040s. Cellular meat will destroy slaughterhouse meat.
PF plus CA will be the Second Food Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution involved the domestication of plants and animals for food. The Second Food Revolution will involve the domestication of micro-organisms as agents of food production. PF plus CA will require about one percent of the land area required for conventional agriculture. This will release for rewilding or other uses an area of land equivalent to the land area of the U.S. plus China plus Australia. This will bring a halt to the Anthropogenic Extinction Event, and with the other Disruptions will first mitigate and then repair the damage to the Earth’s biosphere (atmosphere, soil, and ocean) of the several centuries of fossil-fuel use. In time one can anticipate a universal moral shift to Biophilia: a conversion of humankind from the top predator to the guardian and custodian of the biosphere.
"Veganism represents a holistic approach to living that transcends dietary preferences, advocating for a world where all beings can coexist without harm."
There is something new on the horizon that you should be aware of, understand, and, I hope, enthusiastically embrace. There is a nonprofit thinktank called RethinkX (https://www.rethinkx.com/) that has forecast and analyzed four "Disruptions" in various stages of development that we are undergoing: Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor. Obviously, the Food Disruption is the one most relevant to this discussion.
The X in RethinkX stands for crossed logistic, S, curves. The rising curve represents the adoption of a new disrupting technology, and the falling curve represents the bankruptcy of the incumbent technology. In today's world these take about fifteen to twenty years to be completed. Think of the internal combustion engine (soon to be disrupted itself by the EV in the new Transportation Disruption) disrupting the horse (after some three thousand years) at the beginning of the twentieth century, digital photography disrupting celluloid film photography, or Gutenberg's printing press disrupting two and a half millennia of handwritten manuscripts. Food, in the form of two technologies, precision fermentation (PF) and cellular agriculture (CA) is at the beginning of a disruption of the ten-thousand-year-old-plus Neolithic Revolution.
PF, the more basic of the two, is brewing, with the added feature of genetic modification of the fermenting microbe to produce any of the thousands of different nutrient molecules—protein, fat, or carbohydrate. Note that this is not GMO food: the modification is to the fermenting microbe, not to the brewed product, which contains no genetic material. Like other disruptions, this began as an incredibly expensive process, but the price has plummeted and will continue to do so until it is much less expensive than conventional food production, which will drive the disruption. The first product was pharmaceutical: Humulin or human insulin, a precision brew, disrupted animal insulin, a distinctly inferior pharmaceutical extracted and processed from pancreases in slaughterhouses. The acronym for the Standard American Diet, which has unfortunately been spreading worldwide, is appropriately, SAD. It is responsible for the worldwide explosion of the chronic diseases of aging. Its disappearance will be part of the disruption.
CA will be started from cellular biopsies from food animals, which will not harm those animals. The principal expense of producing these cultures is the cost of their distinctive growth cultures. As the cost of PF plummets, the cost of CA will follow, and will bankrupt the slaughterhouse and send it into oblivion. This process should be essentially complete in the early 2040s. Cellular meat will destroy slaughterhouse meat.
PF plus CA will be the Second Food Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution involved the domestication of plants and animals for food. The Second Food Revolution will involve the domestication of micro-organisms as agents of food production. PF plus CA will require about one percent of the land area required for conventional agriculture. This will release for rewilding or other uses an area of land equivalent to the land area of the U.S. plus China plus Australia. This will bring a halt to the Anthropogenic Extinction Event, and with the other Disruptions will first mitigate and then repair the damage to the Earth’s biosphere (atmosphere, soil, and ocean) of the several centuries of fossil-fuel use. In time one can anticipate a universal moral shift to Biophilia: a conversion of humankind from the top predator to the guardian and custodian of the biosphere.